1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing systems and, in particular, to building application program interfaces for extensible markup language documents.
2. Description of Related Art
Database architectures, such as E-business infrastructures, include large numbers of data entities. These entities may be stored as objects in a data store. The data entities also include large numbers of attributes, which may also be entities. An application program interface (API) may be programmed to access the entities and their attributes.
However, entities may share common attributes. For example, status may be an attribute of several entities, such as customer, user, server, etc. Thus, developers may need to provide code for accessing entities and their attributes redundantly.
Furthermore, the database architecture may change. For example, database column names may change or be removed from previous versions. Therefore, a developer may also need to update the API code for every change in the database architecture. The code must-also be changed for each entity being affected.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide an improved mechanism for code reusability and maintainability in application program interfaces.